End of an era: The next 'Super Mario' doesn't have a Game Over screen

For the first time in the core Super Mario series, Super Mario Odyssey will not have a Game Over screen.

The official Super Mario Odyssey Twitter account for Japan shared this game-changing piece of information this week, showing what happens instead when Mario runs out of health in the upcoming Switch game:

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When Mario runs out of health in Odyssey he loses 10 coins and falls into the black abyss, then respawns at the last checkpoint flag he touched. The tweet says there is no Game Over screen.

In a follow-up tweet, the Japanese Odyssey account notes that even if Mario doesn't have 10 coins, he still won't get a Game Over screen.

Although this is a pretty big change for the series -- considering every other Super Mario game has had some sort of Game Over screen -- the lack of a Game Over falls in line with the modernization of Nintendo's series. A Game Over screen used to indicate more than just your latest death: it meant restarting certain levels or an entire chapter of levels. In Super Mario's case: restarting kingdoms.

Unlike other sandbox-style games like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, Odyssey doesn't kick Mario out of whatever level he's in every time he grabs a power moon (the Odyssey equivalent of a star or shine). This frees players to get comfortable in each kingdom rather than penalizing them every time they die by booting them back a few levels.

You'll still get punished for dying in Odyssey though -- it'll cost you coins and some progress. But that doesn't hurt nearly as bad as confronting the implications behind the big, bold-lettered words "GAME OVER" that used to taunt you from the screen.